Patching up the Italian – Finale

"Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo" (akioohtori)
03/05/2018 at 11:42 • Filed to: The Alfa Doesn't Have A Tag Yet

I am pleased to say the final round of Alfa repairs was mostly completed on Saturday. Not only did we not lose the patient, but I finally have floorboards… and a working interior light!

For those who haven’t read before, the tl;dr is the Alfa had some manner of badness befall it which caused one of the chassis rails, the driver’s floorboard, and the driver’s rocker panel to rot out. The Alfa club offered its assistance in doing the repairs, rather than scrap the car or blow thousands on a restorer.

Saturday’s focus was on finishing up the chassis rail, which started an steel beam and a very large hydraulic ram. While David has a hydraulic ram (“Porapower”) he didn’t have enough tubes to get what we needed to do done. I went ahead and bought an additional kit and together we had enough to push the chassis rail back under where the floorpan was supposed to be, more or less.

Next up was cutting out a template repair panel for the back of the chassis rail. I’d already cleaned off the majority of the rust !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and only needed to do some minor grinding with David’s vastly superior tool set.

After getting the repair plate cut out, test fit, recut, and generally manipulated to be “close enough” we got it welded in and moved to the front with essentially the same process.

Job done, I ground back the welds and hit it with some primer. Perfect? No. Good enough? Absolutely.

We then turned our attention to the last piece. When the chassis rail was damaged to tore out the welds and tore the floor pan. Must have been a helluva thing to ride through.

Anyway, we squared off the hole, cut a panel, and secured it using these funny panel holder things.

Anyway, after some time, a fair amount of swearing, and a touch of hammering, we got the panel in. Woot!

What remains

Well I need to get under it with a grinder, a can of undercoating, and a lot of patience.

Then we need to start on the other side, which isn’t nearly as bad, but still needs attention.

Also the front end needs all the suspension replaced.

And the rear end.

And new carpets...

And...

ANYWAY funny enough, when we were finished one of my interior lights decided it was going to start working. ALL THE TIME. This made for an amusing drive home in the dark with my feet well illuminated.

But still: hooray! The Alfa will live to see another day.

DISCUSSION (2)

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
03/05/2018 at 15:39

Nicely done!

pip bip - choose Corrour > Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
03/06/2018 at 06:20

gotta love Italian electrics